THE CHARMS OF THE ARAQCIN

According to the history of costume, the araqcin is a skull cap made of expensive fabric (usually tirma that was used to make thick shawls) embroidered with gold thread. Traditionally, it was an element of men's attire. The araqcins were especially popular with men. Of course, like any element of any people's attire, the araqcin reflected not only the age, but also the social status of its owner. The modest cap of a rather poor merchant, made of dark fabric, could not compare to a wealthy person's araqcin which was densely embroidered with "gulabatin" (gold thread).

A luxuriant remix

However, these traditions have changed nowadays - araqcins have returned even to world fashion, not to mention the outfit of the local Baku elite. They are now worn by representatives of both sexes. They are knitted not only from tirma. They are decorated as richly as possible, because ladies now use the araqcin as an element of their attire, which means that the story with trousers is repeating itself. This modest element of men's clothing has also become an elaborate element of women's attire. As for the araqcin, things are more difficult with it than with trousers, because it has always been ornate to some extent, so you can lose your sense of proportion in the process of modernizing it. Examples of such "elaboration" can be seen in our gift shops sometimes - behind the obsessive sheen of the lurex, you cannot see the beauty of the cap and the subtlety of the work because there is no subtlety at all. However, you can also see in the same shops exclusive works in this style - it depends how lucky you are.

However, strange as it may seem, none of the country's painters have even thought of making araqcins, i.e. creating a whole collection of such works and putting it up in an exhibition, not in a gift shop.

And there you go. The prominent painter, Inna Kostina, was the first Azerbaijani painter who created a whole collection of modern araqcins. Kostina is using various types of fabric, and silk, velvet, felt and brocade lose their initial appearance - the pattern is created by putting pieces of fabric on each other. The same sky blue silk can look almost lilac thanks to its "cover" from a kapron ribbon or emerald because of small crisscross atlas ribbons.

Inna Kostina loves the araqcin made of luxurious brown velvet without any elaborate pattern most of all. She loves it because unlike its other "colleagues" (Kostina's collection has more than 50 works), it is made not from modern fabric, but from her grandmother's ceremonial dress. It is a kind of family relic… In autumn when the painter's personal exhibition of this collection will be held, many araqcins will be sold - there are already buyers. But Inna is not going to sell this brown one to anyone…

When you have to create

But there is a question: Why did Inna Kostina decide to realize her creative energy in such an unusual way? We are used to seeing pictures at her personal painting exhibitions and batiks and painted silk scarves at her exhibitions of applied arts. All judges of arts in our city know about them. But it is not really known, for example, that she has been engaged in monumental painting and has participated in painting the interior of one of Baku's Orthodox churches. And no-one could even assume that Inna Kostina would "betray" the paints and paintbrushes and take up the needle and thread. However, fate decreed that she should focus on araqcins…

This collection started with two stories. The first story is that "every cloud has a silver lining". Last summer Kostina was doing batiks. As is known, this work is very harmful. She became allergic to paint as she constantly breathed in wax. She became allergic not only to aniline paints which she used for her batiks, but also to oil paints used in painting. It is terrible for a painter to lose your favourite job for quite a long time. "I was eager to work as my creative spirit would not leave me alone!" Inna Kostina remembers.

Fate itself showed her the way out. Art dealer Elmar Hasimov, who respects national traditions in arts, asked Kostina to make him an araqcin. This is how the first exhibit of the painter's future collection was created. That same first araqcin was totally black - its beauty was in a game of patterns from various pieces of fabric: from velvet to kapron. In her next works, Kostina played not only with patterns, but also with decorations and ornament.

She would probably be glad to go back… Perhaps, we should explain these words. The thing is that while studying in the State Institute for Cinematography, Inna Kostina made furnishings for "Arsin mal alan" and "Masadi Ibad" theatre performances. This is when she fell in love with araqcins.

The decorations on the araqcins made by Kostina can be different - she actively uses gold ribbons, beads and strass. She herself likes strict ornaments - from black beads and dark strass, but the collection has many caps of pure, deep and bright colours. All of them combine perfectly well with silk scarves of various colours which continue Inna Kostina's famous "Simurq" project. As is known, this was a collection of batiks and silk scarves decorated with gold. Our painter presented it last year at a festival in Norway at the invitation of the Norwegian government.

There is little time left to the first festival of Kostina's araqcins to be held in Baku this autumn. For this reason, Inna is working hard, and long summer days allow her to make better use of natural lighting (artificial lighting does not help because it changes the colour of material). In order to save time, Inna has organized her work almost in a scientific way. To avoid wasting her time on routine things, she herself does all the creative work - she designs araqcins with all their numerous decorations and multi-layer patterns, while the purely technical work is done by her colleague and painter Inna Basirova.

Inna Kostina's collection of araqcins is quite large though the exhibits are quite small. Our photojournalist tried to take a picture of all of them together. In order to do so, he had to stand on a big table and lean on the backs of two chairs. But in any case, he failed to take all the araqcins together… By the time this collection is presented in Baku, their number will increase. Next year Inna Kostina is planning personal exhibitions in Russia and Peru. This time there will be several hundred exhibits that will present the original sphere of Azerbaijani applied arts, on which the modern painter is working.